U.S. Pat. No. 3,081,045 to Pitts et al discloses portions of an automatic winding machine having means for rotating a delivery package to wind the yarn thereon, an unwinding station, a reserve station and means for uniting yarn from such reserve station to yarn on the delivery package upon a signal created by the absence of an active yarn winding end at the unwinding station. Also disclosed therein is an automatic package replenishing mechanism for presenting a fresh supply package of yarn to an active position for winding on the delivery package upon exhaustion of a similar such supply package. The automatic package supply device of the present invention is useful with automatic winding machines of the type therein described and has particular usefulness in handling large and extremely large packages such as result from open end spinning processes. Accordingly, U.S. Pat. No. 3,081,045 is herewith expressly incorporated by reference as part of the subject disclosure to insure a more full understanding of the environment in which the present invention operates.
With such large packages it is not possible to utilize the supply package indexing mechanism disclosed in the aforesaid patent. Thus the present supply creel construction was developed so as to assure an orderly presentation of large supply packages which in turn supply an active unwinding yarn to the unwinding station of an automatic winding machine such as disclosed in the above referred to patent. The subject creel also serves to present a reserve yarn supply package for supplying yarn to the reserve station of such an automatic winding machine and further thereafter serves to sequentially advance said reserve yarn to the active unwinding position and said active unwinding yarn to a reserve position upon a signal created by the absence of an active unwinding yarn at the unwinding station. The absence of such yarn could be brought about by either the exhaustion of the active supply package of yarn or by a break in said yarn between the yarn supply and the unwinding station. In either case, the package supply device of the present invention indexes so as to assure a continual supply of yarn to the unwinding station of the automatic yarn winding machine.
Since such automatic yarn winding machines are limited in physical construction as to the amount of space which can be afforded to a supply creel or related device it is necessary that the device accomplish the aforementioned results in the limited space frame available and to further enable an operator to conveniently replace an exhausted yarn package and thread up a substitute yarn package to the reserve position of the machine without interruption of the unwinding cycle.